Study on MAC protocols for Wireless Sensor Network (WSN)

Abstract

Wireless Sensor Network(WSN) is the collection of spatial self-explanatory devices or sensor nodes that’s are tiny, cheap, low power and smart sensors which collect information’s from the environment to attain particular application destinations and transfer it through the network to the base station or main location. For these nodes, energy is the most important factor in WSN. Sensor nodes have limited battery power. Short life time of these sensor nodes. For increasing the life time of these nodes have to replace or change the battery. Sensor nodes are dead when they are out of battery. The life time of this node can enhance and can also achieve desired energy efficiency by using a well-designed MAC (Medium Access Control) protocols. The challenge is to improve the system performance and to make network efficient. MAC layer protocols for battery-powered networks and energy harvesting- based networks are discussed and compared. In this survey paper, Various medium-access control (MAC) protocols with different objectives has been described for wireless sensor networks. Then, we describe several MAC protocols for sensor networks. In this article, we first outline the sensor network properties that are crucial for the design of MAC layer protocols. Then, we describe several MAC protocols proposed for sensor networks, emphasizing their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, we point out open research issues with regard to MAC layer design.